The Internet changed the dynamics of marketing as consumers moved from traditional forms of media, such as TV and newspapers, to modern media channels, including social media and websites. As you can see in the graphic below, traditional media channels face a number of drawbacks over digital media in driving market performance today. The emerging technologies and trends define the digital era. Your digital profile is an asset to your brand. Hiring a digital marketing agency such as Edge Marketing is imperative to help your brand thrive in the world we face today.
Digital marketing utilizes modern tools and technologies to promote your brand or services, online where consumers spend most of the time on either entertainment, information seeking, or connecting. Eighty-six percent of internet users prefer searching for required purchases through a search engine before making a purchase. A whopping 79% of them invest in products and purchase online rather than going to a physical store. You only had to venture out for black Friday shopping today to see the impact of digital forms of communicating deals and digital purchase options to see the massive impact of digital marketing on in-store shopping. Instead of rummaging through sales ads in the newspaper, as might have happened in years past, consumers scrolled their smartphones looking for coupons or sales at stores they visited. Stores ignorant of this fact didn’t prioritize connectivity in their stores and lost sales when consumers couldn’t connect there.
Statistics continue to highlight the profound change in consumer behavior wrought by the internet and ubiquitous connectivity. The shift becomes more evident post covid era, as you can see from the image below. Although this graphic uses data from the UK, you find similar patterns across most developed countries.
Digital media helps create strong brands that tend to rule the marketplace. It helps bring forward its vision and mission in front of potential customers. Digital marketing helps build a strong identity that appeals to its potential audience.
5 reasons why digital marketing is a must for your brand
High-reach and cost-effective
If you intend to market your product to the masses, digital marketing is a necessity. It is no longer optional to choose digital media. If you want to reach your target market, especially if that market is younger, an online presence is imperative. Don’t believe me? According to data from 2022, the average user spends a total of 417 minutes online in various activities; 415 is the global average.
Below, you can see a table depicting the number of hours consumers spent online shopping in 2017.
Online marketing is the most cost-effective medium of marketing, which is why digital media spend is now nearly 50% of an organization’s advertising budget, a percentage that increases every year. When you consider the cost of a single TV ad during the Super Bowl is over $6 million while the average CPC (cost per click) for social media advertising tops out at a little over $5 (for LinkedIn ads), the ratio of spending between traditional and digital underestimates the focus of organizations on their digital marketing activities. We’ll expand on this discussion below by pointing to the much higher ROI available in digital campaigns.
Digital advertising and other marketing efforts also provide the ability to track where your money goes so you can improve performance over time by tweaking your campaigns. You can track the number of visitor clicks, the message that drove the click, which CTA (calls to action) drives the highest percentage of clicks, and how visitors move through your website to calculate conversion rates. Analyzing these data from digital ads helps you improve your engagement and optimize conversion stats for your marketing campaigns. Such nuanced metrics are a pipedream for traditional advertising, with the exception of direct marketing, like mail.
Brand image and awareness
Whether you operate a company with a well-known brand or you’re just getting started with your business, online marketing can help you reach new heights quickly. Running digital campaigns on social platforms helps build awareness or enhance the awareness of your brand to new prospective customers. The targeting available on these platforms means you waste less of your budget than in traditional marketing campaigns where much of your budget is wasted reaching viewers who lack the money, need, authority, or desire for the products you sell. Creating content that drives engagement helps spread your message from one group of social media users who follow your brand to their friends who likely share traits that make them good candidates for your products.
Content also helps you improve your rank when users search for products like the ones you sell. This is called SEO or search engine optimization. Creating valuable content on a consistent basis is the fundamental element that helps optimize your search performance.
As you can see, creating awareness, driving engagement, and managing your brand image to generate more sales isn’t something you just do. It takes years of experience and skill to manage a successful online marketing campaign. Digital marketing agencies such as Edge Marketing have talented experts with years of experience who can get your brand to the top three pages of search engines that receive maximum visibility.
Agencies plan strategies and PR activities support both your online and offline marketing performance. By protecting your reputation from inaccurate or fake reviews to generating UGC, user-generated content, that supports your brand or managing your content marketing, an agency provides a valuable service for businesses of all sizes and shapes.
Increased ROI
When done right, you can market your products or services to users who need your products. Below, you can see a comparison of the average conversion rate for search advertising (Google Ads) versus the Google display network across industries. As you can see, search ads far outperform display ads across all categories.
We see a similar pattern when comparing various forms of digital advertising against traditional advertising channels. Note the much lower cost available through digital marketing, as compared with traditional channels
Investing in digital media is much less costly than traditional marketing and is much more result-oriented. Compared to your brick-and-mortar store, it has an impressive global reach. It is empowered to touch a targetted audience interested in your product or services daily.
Retain customers
Digital marketing not only helps to attract new customers but also helps retain existing ones. Consumers, especially younger ones, don’t want to reach out with a phone call or waste time comparing products in a physical store. Instead, they expect you to answer their queries on your website or respond through social media to their questions. Chatbots are a great tool as they use artificial intelligence to answer routine questions. They’re available 24/7 so prospective buyers and customers get accurate answers anytime. This option is not only more responsive to your target audience but much less costly than other forms of customer service.
Also, you might consider offering customer service hours on social platforms. Again, there’s a cost advantage to this arrangement and your market knows they’ll get a real person when they visit during posted hours.
Engagement
Many of the influential figures in the digital world promote brands. These social media users have large, engaged audiences that consider the influencer’s recommendation when thinking about making a purchase. Skillfully using these influencers involves choosing the right influencers, managing them to gain favorable recommendations, and negotiating fair compensation. Top influencers have very large audiences and can make millions of dollars a year. But, you can find the right influencer for your brand at a reasonable price by using databases available for just this purpose.
More about digital media
Digital marketing gives you optimum exposure that helps you establish brand awareness and builds your brand personality. Presence on all digital marketing channels helps propagate higher brand recognition; consumers are more likely to invest in your services if they know you. Consumers favor strong brands, which allows them to put forward premium pricing. Digital space will enable you to come forward and engage with the leaders regarding decisions related to your industry. You can quickly establish yourself as an industry expert, promoting trust for your brand. It maximizes the effectiveness of your digital campaign. Digital marketing is one of the best ways to capture the audience’s attention searching for your services online.
Unlike traditional means of marketing, the effects of digital media are measurable and traceable. It impacts the ROI Of your brand by marketing your products straight to the consumers. Work with a digital marketing agency that has experienced employees with exposure to advanced tools and software that can help you achieve success in the digital world at a faster pace.
Wrap up
Digital marketing has become a necessity for a successful brand. It helps grow your audience and establish an authoritative online presence. Digital ads allow brands to get deeper insights into consumer behavior. You can know exactly what content or product on your website is grabbing eyeballs and what segment lacks engagement.
So, look for the top agencies whose operational methods align with your business needs and goals. Do ample research and choose a reputable one.
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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.
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